Green retailing practices: An exploratory comparison between Chinese and British retailers

Constituting the link between supply and demand, retailers can play an important role in a supply chain's green operations and logistics activities, which are one of the key contemporary concerns of governments and the general public. China, as a huge, fast-developing and opening marketplace has been attractive to British and other international retailers. However, the competition facing these retailers in the Chinese marketplace is intensifying. Research shows that British retailers began greening their business operations earlier than Chinese businesses that are still at an early stage. British retailers thus have an early-mover advantage with green operations as a characteristic competitive strength. The comparative study presented in this paper on the current green status/approaches of both Chinese and British retailers will be valuable to managers who are developing green strategies to enhance their competitiveness in the Chinese retail sector; the paper also enriches green theories in relation to this particular marketplace. </jats:p

Milk-run routing problem with progress-lane in the collection of automobile parts

In recent years, the automotive industry has faced an unprecedented crisis. In particular, the zero-inventory approach, which has been widely pursued by many automobile companies, seems to be impractical in some real production contexts since it requires an inventory of all parts but in low amounts. In this paper, we investigate a new logistics method which collects automobile parts by integrating the progress-lane (P-LANE) into the corresponding vehicle routing problem. We propose a mixed integer programming formulation for this new model, which can simultaneously determines the trip routes to collect automobile parts, as well as the P-LANE that each collected part should be assigned to, so as to minimize the total costs of the production and inbound logistics. The comparison with the zero-inventory model shows that the use of the P-LANE within the milk-run system could significantly decrease the total costs and also improve the transportation efficiency. To be specific, for small and large size instances, the total costs of the zero-inventory model are about 10% and 30% higher than the ones with P-LANE, respectively, which suggests that the periodic part collection model with P-LANE could be more appropriate for automobile manufacturing

Knowledge identification in medium sized enterprises under the context of quality improvement: An exploration in manufacturing companies in China

As a fundamental element of knowledge management (KM), knowledge identification is a crucial issue in contemporary business organisations. As evidenced by research, medium sized enterprises (MEs) contribute constructively and significantly to economic development, society stabilisation and employment increase. Their healthy survival and growth are of critical importance to a nation. Among the approaches ensuring the successful development of MEs, quality improvement (QI) is a crucial one. However, what is and how to identify the knowledge most relevant to the MEs’ QI, the drives and sources for identifying the QI knowledge (QIK) as well as the underpinning rationales, are currently lacking of sufficient exploration. A research focusing on these issues has been strongly emphasised by literature and attested by this research itself of its meaningfulness. Through analysing empirical data collected and attested by a combination of firstly semi-structured interview, focus group following a case study strategy and then a structured interview, this exploratory research has obtained and prioritised the up-to-date answers to these questions, leading to the enrichment of the theoretical understanding of KM approaches in operations with a consideration of quality management. Real world MEs can rely on these findings as a guidance to obtain, select and apply appropriate QIK for their operations performance improvement. The findings can also be referential for knowledge identification and application in view of QI in other type business organisations.

An adaptive large neighbourhood search algorithm for parallel assembly lines scheduling problem with complex fixture constraints

In recent years, the value chain facilitates the transition of competition among enterprises from a single link to a comprehensive one, thereby driving intelligent upgrades within manufacturing enterprises. The intelligent upgrading also imposes new constraints on the traditional assembly line production mode. Inspired by the real production practices of company L, a global intelligent terminal manufacturing enterprise headquartered in China, this study addresses the parallel heterogeneous assembly line scheduling problem with fixture constraints (HALSFC). To tackle this challenging problem, we propose a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model that aims to maximize the number of completed work orders within a specified time. To our best knowledge, this study is among the first attempts to address the HALSFC problem with setups and related work orders. Due to the NP-hardness of the problem, we propose an improved adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm (IALNS) for solving HALSFC. We evaluate both model functionalities and algorithm effectiveness using instances generated based on the real production data of company L. Extensive experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of IALNS compared to MILP, Tabu search algorithm (TS) and genetic algorithm (GA), especially for medium- and large-scale instances. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis of the quality inspection time, the related work orders proportion and the minimum cooling time of fixtures is also conducted

Critical success criteria for B2B E-commerce systems in Chinese medical supply chain.

The paper presents an exploratory investigation to determine and prioritise the critical success criteria, which can measure and guide the successful application and performance improvement of business to business e-commerce system (BBECS) in a medical supply chain's selling and buying functions, in the context of global business expansion. The research reveals that the buying and the selling functions have different prioritisations on the majority of the determined critical success measuring criteria. These criteria are categorised into three Critical Success Measuring Criteria Groups, for the selling and the buying functions, respectively, guiding medical supply chain members in harnessing the full advantage of a BBECS. For the selling function, the top critical success measuring criteria are as follows: integrating information searching/transmission and application processes, ensuring the reliability and timeliness of technical support, ensuring recognition and acceptance of e-commerce processes, displaying the organisation's business focus and product/service provisions online, securing a large scale/amount of business transactions, adjusting production outputs and inventory levels and having more registered users than competitors do. The top critical success measuring criteria for the buying function are as follows: securing the establishment of business relationships between businesses, displaying the measures ensuring mutual trust and cooperation online, ensuring employees' recognition of the benefit of e-commerce in increasing revenue, ensuring the contribution to the development and realisation of corporate strategy, achieving cost reduction for the organisation, making the purchase of famous brand products available/doable, securing a large scale/amount of business transactions, and ensuring the attainability of products/services at a lower price

Consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, artificially sweetened beverages and fruit juices and risk of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and mortality: A meta-analysis

Introduction: Sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) intake is associated with an increased risk of cardiometabolic diseases. However, evidence regarding associations of artificially sweetened beverages (ASBs) and fruit juices with cardiometabolic diseases is mixed. In this study, we aimed to investigate the association between the SSB, ASB and fruit juice consumption with the incidence of cardiometabolic conditions and mortality. Methods: Relevant prospective studies were identified by searching PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library until December 2022 without language restrictions. The pooled relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated for the association of SSBs, ASBs, and fruit juices with the risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D), cardiovascular disease (CVD), and mortality by using random-effect models. Results: A total of 72 articles were included in this meta-analysis study. Significantly positive associations were observed between the consumption of individual beverages and T2D risk (RR: 1.27; 95% CI: 1.17, 1.38 for SSBs; RR: 1.32; 95% CI: 1.11, 1.56 for ASBs; and RR:0.98; 95% CI: 0.93, 1.03 for fruit juices). Moreover, our findings showed that intakes of SSBs and ASBs were significantly associated with risk of hypertension, stroke, and all-cause mortality (RR ranging from 1.08 to 1.54; all p < 0.05). A dose-response meta-analysis showed monotonic associations between SSB intake and hypertension, T2D, coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke and mortality, and the linear association was only significant between ASB consumption and hypertension risk. Higher SSB and ASB consumptions were associated with a greater risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases and mortality. Fruit juice intake was associated with a higher risk of T2D. Conclusion: Therefore, our findings suggest that neither ASBs nor fruit juices could be considered as healthier beverages alternative to SSBs for achieving improved health. Systematic Review Registration: [PROSPERO], identifier [No. CRD42022307003]

Use of opaque sales channels in addition to traditional channels by service providers

<p>Motivated by the recent opaque selling trend promoted by Priceline and Hotwire, this study examines a game in which two collaborative service providers may use an opaque selling channel to satisfy demand from both leisure and business customers. Further, the service providers must make a strategic decision as to which opaque selling channel is more profitable: posted price (PP) or name your own price (NYOP). By comparing the profits from the three cases (traditional single channel, traditional and PP dual channel, and traditional and NYOP dual channel), we find some interesting results driven by the strategic interaction between two service providers and by the heterogeneity of customers. Firstly, a dual channel offers advantages over the single traditional channel, as opaque selling allows service providers to utilise customers’ heterogeneity, and thus facilitates price discrimination and customer segmentation. Secondly, choosing the traditional and NYOP mechanism enables service providers to optimise profits when the proportion and valuation of business customers, the opacity of the service, and the leisure customers’ degree of pessimism are all relatively high. Lastly, the traditional and NYOP combination outperforms the traditional and PP mechanism as a result of the relatively large pessimistic state of leisure customers.</p

A Photonic Crystal Magnetic Field Sensor Using a Shoulder-Coupled Resonant Cavity Infiltrated with Magnetic Fluid

A kind of photonic crystal magnetic field sensor is proposed and investigated numerically. The shoulder-coupled resonant cavity is introduced in the photonic crystal, which is infiltrated with magnetic fluid. Through monitoring the shift of resonant wavelength, the magnetic field sensing is realized. According to the designed infiltration schemes, both the magnetic field sensitivity and full width at half maximum increase with the number of infiltrated air holes. The figure of merit of the structure is defined to evaluate the sensing performance comprehensively. The best structure corresponding to the optimal infiltration scheme with eight air holes infiltrated with magnetic fluid is obtained